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Comment by jsvaughan | Hacker News Reader

You can get it the other way round though. I don't have it to hand, but I found "Programming in Scala" to have such a low content-per-page ratio that it is hard to stay interested. From the contents page:

2. First Steps in Scala 69

3. Next Steps in Scala 82

4. Classes and Objects 104

100 pages and you're only onto classes and objects!

Dive into Python has it right, IMO - show you something, then explain it bit by bit.

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I co-authored a book published by Wrox Press a few years ago. Editors specifically tell you to pad as much as you can - the fatter a technical book, the better it sells apparently.

That's an interesting observation. Not long ago I was talking to an editor who thought that books 150-250 pages in length were an ideal sweet spot.

Back when I was young a naive and just starting out this wonderful world of computers, my default stance was, when in doubt buy the thicker of the two books since it must contain more information. I distinctly recall standing in a book store and working out which massive Linux book would give most pages pr dollar.

Now my default stance is, when in doubt, buy the book that's under 300 pages, since if you can't cover you're points in less than 300 pages you're either trying to say way too much or your book is mostly fluff and filler.

Also I imagine the ubiquity of fast internet connections and Google has made the 1200 page "complete reference to everything" type of books more or less obsolete. More and more books these days are "focused expert knowledge in one particular area" which is a lot more suited for the 150-250 page format.

So this is why a lot of Wrox Press look like bricks. Maybe this is OK from a marketing perspective but compare one of this brick books with "The C programming language".

I think Pragmatic Programmers has a better approach at quantity vs quality.

Older, wiser me agrees with you.

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